India’s Sameer Verma completed a turnaround in the men’s singles final of the Syed Modi International Super 300 tournament in Lucknow on Sunday to defend his title. The third seed defeated Lu Guang Zu from China 16-21, 21-19, 21-14 in 70 minutes in a thrilling game in front of a raucous home crowd.
The 25-year-old, more importantly, sealed his spot in the season-ending BWF World Tour Finals set to be held in Guangzhou. He joins PV Sindhu as the only two Indians to finish in the top eight of their respective categories based on their tournament results in 2018.
This was Verma’s third title win of the year overall, following victories at Swiss Open and Hyderabad Open.
The victory will also help him to surpass Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto at No.8 in the HSBC Race to Guangzhou Rankings and qualify for the year-ending BWF World Tour Finals to be held in December.
After the three previous finals involving Indians ended in defeats for the home contingent, the onus was on Verma to turn things around in the final game of the day and he did it in style following a lackluster start. The Indian started the match well, taking an early 8-4 lead in the opener from where Guang Zu completely dominated, winning 14 of the last 18 points to take a 18-12 lead before closing the game out.
The Chinese drew first blood 16-21 in 18 minutes against Verma.
The second game was a very tight affair, with both players trading serves. Verma looked to be in better rhythm after a poor finish to the first game and took a 11-8 lead into the mid-game interval. There were some exciting rallies right from the start. The Indian grabbed an 11-8 lead at the breather after Lu hit long.
After the break, Lu kept snapping at Sameer’s heels, finding gaps in his rival’s defence to narrow the lead to 13-14 and then turned the tables when Sameer hit the net.
A wide smash from Lu again gave the lead to Sameer at 17-16. But two precise returns helped Lu to draw parity at 18-18.
Another fast-paced rally ended with Lu hitting wide and he found the net next to hand two game points to Sameer. The Indian missed the line once but produced an accurate return at the backline to take the match to decider.
The third game saw Verma make the most of the momentum shift, opening up a 7-3 lead before Guang Zu fought back once again to level the score and take a 10-7 lead. Just when it seemed the momentum was shifting again, it was Verma’s turn to put together a run of points to take a 11-10 lead into the final change of ends.
From there, the Indian, ranked 16 in the world, steadied himself to first open up a four-point lead at 16-12 and then closed the decider out 21-14. This was Sameer Verma’s second title on the world tour and he’s the only Indian to do so across categories in 2018.